God, Man, and the World

Translated here for the first time by Barbara E. Galli, these five lectures and writings of Franz Rosenzweig will be welcomed by both the novice and the veteran student of the great philosopher.

Based on his lectures at the Jildisches Freies Lehrhaus, the famous Jewish Institute of Adult Education, the essays include notes for a group of lectures of 1920, “Faith and Knowledge,” followed by a three-part lecture series of 1922: “The Science of God,” “The Science of Man,” and the “Science of World.”

The pieces form a powerful whole. Not only does this book further our understanding of Rosenzweig’s daunting work, The Star of Redemption—a seemingly inexhaustible text—but of Rosenzweig’s primary principles, that of the irreducibility of God, human being, and world, and of the needfulness of relation and of time for the nourishment of truth and cognition. He expounds on his premise that faith and knowledge are interdependent, and that knowledge is derivative of faith.